The Man from Archangel (Paperback)

It was in the days when the tide of Mahdism, which had swept in
such a flood from the great Lakes and Darfur to the confines of
Egypt, had at last come to its full, and even begun, as some hoped,
to show signs of a turn. At its outset it had been terrible. It had
engulfed Hicks's army, swept over Gordon and Khartoum, rolled
behind the British forces as they retired down the river, and
finally cast up a spray of raiding parties as far north as Assouan.
Then it found other channels to east and to west, to Central Africa
and to Abyssinia, and retired a little on the side of Egypt. For
ten years there ensued a lull, during which the frontier garrisons
looked out upon those distant blue hills of Dongola. Behind the
violet mists which draped them, lay a land of blood and horror.
From time to time some adventurer went south towards those
haze-girt mountains, tempted by stories of gum and ivory, but none
ever returned. Once a mutilated Egyptian and once a Greek woman,
mad with thirst and fear, made their way to the lines. They were
the only exports of that country of darkness. Sometimes the sunset
would turn those distant mists into a bank of crimson, and the dark
mountains would rise from that sinister reek like islands in a sea
of blood. It seemed a grim symbol in the southern heaven when seen
from the fort-capped hills by Wady Halfa.